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36 results

2022
Level: beginner
Commons stand for a plurality of practices ‘beyond market and state’ as the famous Commons scholar – and first female noble prize winner of economics - Elinor Ostrom put it. Their practice and theory challenge classical economic theory and stand for a different mode of caring, producing and governing. Within this workshop we want to dive into theory, practice and utopia of Commons following four blocks...
2021
Level: beginner
After completing the module, participants should be able to have general overview on the theory of commons. They can differentiate between neoclassical, new institutional and social/critical commons theory and can use these theories to assess real life common-pool resource management and commoning pratices.
2014
Level: beginner
In this short Video Silke Helfrich discusses the basics of commons. It’s an introduction into the essence of commons from a perspective stemming from outside the economic discipline that focuses on social practice. Her perception challenges the economic mainstream’s perception of common goods and goes beyond a purely materialistic conceptualisation of commons.
2014
Level: beginner
Silvia Federici illustrates the potential of the concept of the commons as way of resistance and reorganization of the society in times of social injustice and ecological crisis. Amongst others, she outlines the role of women in the commons movement. Federici explains why she regards the theory of the tragedy of the commons as unfounded and why she considers Marx's concept of primitive accumulation as still appropriate to describe current events of deprivation, such as land grabbing.
2019
Level: advanced
Free, Fair & Alive is a foundational re-thinking of the commons, the self-organized social systems that human beings have used for millennia to meet their needs.
2022
Level: beginner
"Alexander Kravchuk is an economist and editor at Commons: Journal for Social Criticims, who has previously written about IMF conditions on loans to Ukraine. Jacobin’s David Broder asked him about the country’s economic situation and why debt cancellation is important if Ukrainians are to be able to shape their future." (quote from the interview)
2022
Level: beginner
This open access book presents an alternative to capitalism and state socialism through the modelling of a post-market and post-state utopia based on an upscaling of the commons, feminist political economy and democratic and council-based planning approaches.
 
Institutional economics focuses on the role of social institutions in terms of laws or contracts, but also those of social norms and patterns of human behaviour that are connected to the social organisation of production, distribution and consumption in the economy.
2019
Level: beginner
This course provides future change makers in public and private sectors with a comprehensive overview on the structures and actors that shape markets.
2018
Level: advanced
How can we establish new institutions and practices in order to use fare-free public transport as a beacon for sustainable mobility and a low-carbon lifestyle? The author of this essay elaborates on how practice theory and institutional economics can help to answer this question.
 
Feminist economics focuses on the interdependencies of gender relations and the economy. Care work and the partly non-market mediated reproduction sphere are particularly emphasised by feminist economics.
2016
Level: beginner
A review of: [1] Intermediate Microeconomics, H.R. Varian [2] Mikrooekonomie, R.S. Pindyck, D.L. Rubinfeld [3] Grundzuege der mikrooekonomischen Theorie, J. Schumann, U. Meyer, W. Stroebele
 
Marxian Political Economy focuses on the exploitation of labour by capital. The economy is not conceived as consisting of neutral transactions for exchange and cooperation, but instead as having developed historically out of asymmetric distributions of power, ideology and social conflicts.
2018
Level: beginner
In this essay, the principle of capital accumulation, as well as the idea of homo economicus as the basis of the growth model, are located and analyzed from a feminist perspective. The sufficiency approach is presented as an alternative to these two economic logics.
2020
Level: beginner
Markets are the focus in modern economics: when they work, when they don’t and what we can or can’t do about it. There are many ways to study markets and how we do so will inevitably affect our conclusions about them, including policy recommendations which can influence governments and other major organisations. Pluralism can be a vital corrective to enacting real policies based on only one perspective and a plethora of approaches provide alternatives to the canonical view. Although they have differing implications, these approaches share the idea that we should take a historical approach, analysing markets on a case-by-case basis; and they share a faith in the power of both individuals and collectives to overcome the problems encountered when organising economic activity.
2012
Level: advanced
In this paper the main developments in post-Keynesian macroeconomics since the mid- 1990s will be reviewed. For this purpose the main differences between heterodox economics in general, including post-Keynesian economics, and orthodox economics will be reiterated and an overview over the strands of post-Keynesian economics, their commonalities and developments since the 1930s will be outlined. This will provide the grounds for touching upon three important areas of development and progress of post-Keynesian macroeconomics since the mid-1990s: first, the integration of distribution issues and distributional conflict into short- and long-run macroeconomics, both in theoretical and in empirical/applied works; second, the integrated analysis of money, finance and macroeconomics and its application to changing institutional and historical circumstances, like the process of financialisation; and third, the development of full-blown macroeconomic models, providing alternatives to the mainstream 'New Consensus Model' (NCM), and allowing to derive a full macroeconomic policy mix as a more convincing alternative to the one implied and proposed by the mainstream NCM, which has desperately failed in the face of the recent crises.
2015
Level: advanced
The book is a collection of 51 texts by different scholars and activists, who each adds a dimension/perspective to the topics of degrowth and societal transformation. A societal transformation towards a degrowth society is dependent on a lot of ideas coming together and creating change from various starting points within a society. Therefore, the authors are quite diverse and their contributions vary from being philosophical, natural science based, economic, sociological and so forth. Some are specfiically focused on a concept and others are a more broad critique of e.g., capitalism or growth.
2021
Level: advanced
Der Kurs richtet sich an Interessierte, die einen Überblick über gängige Modellierungsansätze in der Makroökonomik erhalten wollen. Dabei habe ich versucht, Ansätze aus unterschiedlichen Paradigmen zu berücksichtigen, notwendigerweise auf Kosten einer gewissen Tiefe bei den einzelnen Modellierungsframeworks. Der Kurs setzt ein gewisses mathematisches Grundverständnis voraus, sollte aber für fortgeschrittene Bachelor-Studierende der Ökonomik und Master-Studierende von interdisziplinären Studienprogrammen gut geeignet sein. Die Themenauswahl ist natürlich notwendigerweise selektiv. Der erste, größere Abschnitt diskutiert Modelle für wirtschaftlichen Wandel in der langen Frist (Wachstumsmodelle). Der zweite, kürzere Abschnitte behandelt dann Modelle, welche versuchen eine langfristige mit einer kurzfristigen Perspektive zu verbinden.
2019
Level: beginner
In this essay the authors take a look at how welfare could be provided in a degrowth society.
2019
Level: beginner
The module is designed to first present some of the main schools of thought from a historical and methodological perspective. Each week we explore and critically assess the main tenants of each school of thought. In the second part of the module we link history of economic thought and methodology to a specific and contemporary economic question. The second part allows you to engage with current economic issues with an awareness of methodology and methodological differences and with some knowledge of the history of economics.
2021
Level: beginner
Participants should be able to distinguish the strictly non-cooperative (methodological individualist) foundations of traditional neoclassical economics as being couched in self-interested individuals, as well as having basic knowledge of an alternative set of theories based on the primacy cooperation and social norms and extending the breadth of economic analysis beyond exchange.
2020
Level: beginner
Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece and the co-founder of the international DiEM25 platform, discusses the economic and political impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic, in particular with regards to the Eurozone and southern European countries.
2020
Level: beginner
The effects of the 2020 pandemic on the Latin-American region: a thorough before-after analysis.
 
Complexity economics focuses on interactions and interdependencies between individuals and structures in economic systems. Those are systems of organised complexity. High importance is given to the analysis of networks.
Level: beginner
This article outlines the fundamental challenges of democratically planned economies and categorises proposed models into six groups, each of which approaches planning and coordination at different levels of authority and between myriad economic units in a particular way, taking into account efficiency as well as democratic principles and environmental and social sustainability. Through a classification system based on decision-making authority and mediation mechanisms, the article provides a framework for understanding and comparing these models. By examining their different approaches, it offers insights into the complexities and potential paths of democratically planned economies in the 21st century.
2016
Level: beginner
Beyond Growth is a collection of educational materials offering a reflection on growth. It was created as a joint project of the associations Fairbindung e. V. and Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, both based in Germany. The page provides learning materials and methods  to stimulate thinking about the conditions of our current economy as well as possible alternatives.
2015
Level: advanced
In this piece Alexander Kravchuk gives an overview over the history of dept dependency in Ukraine, highlighting especially the role of international creditors and the negative socio-economic impacts of debt dependency for the Ukrainian economy.
2019
Level: advanced
The podcast is an interview of Silvia Federici by David Denvir. It is centred around her book 'Caliban and the Witch - Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation', but they also draw lines to contemporary issues and political struggles. Federici analyses the emergence of capitalism through a radical Feminist-Marxist lens.
2022
Level: beginner
In this teaching pack, we look at the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk. In particular, we focus on what it means to take a company private and how the deal was financed.
Level: beginner
Understanding the financial crisis from four very different economic theories: Social Economics, Institutional Economics, Post Keynesian economics.
2013
Level: advanced
This brief views the environment through diverse lenses – those of standard economics, institutional economics, political science, environmental science and ecology.
2014
Level: advanced
Economics After the Crisis is an introductory economics textbook, covering key topics in micro and macro economics. However, this book differs from other introductory economics textbooks in the perspective it takes, and it incorporates issues that are presently underserved by existing textbooks on the market. This book offers an introduction to economics that takes into account criticisms of the orthodox approach, and which acknowledges the role that this largely Western approach has played in the current global financial and economic crisis.

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